Serbia Thrash Helpless Azzuri

Serbia finished the Group F games with style thanks to a 97-52 smash of Italy in the OMNITEL U18 European Championship at Lietuvos Rytas Arena in Vilnius, Lithuania on Wednesday evening.

Nikola Siladi led 6 Serbians in double-digits with 15 in addition to 11 rebounds and was joined by Bogic Vujosevic with 13, Bogdan Bogdanovic and Djordje Drenovac with 11 each while Bozo Dumic and Marko Gujanicic had 10 each.

Vukasin Petkovic had 9 points in a balanced Serbia attack that rolled over the Azzuri

Alessandro Gentile, the top scorer of the championship coming to this game, who didn't go below 21 points so far, was limited to only 2 points with a single bucket in 8 attempts.

This might explain the bad day of the Italian side.

The early minutes didn't tell story of the game as Serbia was behind and Gentile scored his only field goal to give Italy a 6-9 lead after 3:37 minutes.

Vujosevic combined points until 3 Serbs scored in a 7-0 run to create 24-15 close to the final line of the opening period.

Ceron scored the last point of the first quarter to make it 27-18 but that was also the last point his team scored for the next 4 minutes.

Against Serbia this was too long of a drought and after Drenovac hit yet another jumper Serbia held a 42-18 advantage.

During that run Gentile committed his 3rd foul and his team-mates were unable to fill the gap.

Nunzio Sabbatino scored 6 and Ceron scored from long range to finish the first half behind by no more than 15, 47-32 but not enough to make a difference.

Ceron added another three pointer to make it 53-41 but after a big block by Drenovac on a Gentile shot the Serbian team exploded and went on a 15-1 run until the 3rd buzzer. which extended to the next one with a Siladi three point arrow.

Italy's next field goal came with under 5 minutes to play after almost 12 minutes of 4 points, all from the charity stripe.

By that time the gap was already 37 and the final buzzer sealed a 45 point win for the Serbians.